ANDREW CREAGH
THIS MONTH we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Sydney’s Gay And Lesbian Mardi Gras, and the other global hot spots where LGBTQI people meet to party. Forty years ago, in 1978, Sydney’s gay and lesbian activists took to the streets to commemorate the anniversary of the riots at The Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969. That impromptu street battle against the NYPD is regarded as the birth of the modern LGBTQI rights movement. As the Sydney protest also unravelled into violence, the echoes of Stonewall were loud and clear. And, as with Stonewall, the Sydney protest became a movement and, ultimately, a cultural festival that helped reform laws and change lives.